A Comparison of Seining and Electroshocking in the Rouge River, MI.

The Rouge River, an EPA Area of Concern, in southeast Michigan is considered a highly degraded river. Varied watershed restoration projects have occurred over the last several decades. These projects have improved the abiotic components of the river, but improvements to the biotic communities are uncertain. Friends of the Rouge (FOTR), a non-profit committed to restoring the river, has been monitoring fish communities since 2012 by seining. The largely volunteer monitoring program has sampled > 135 sites in the watershed and identified over 60 fish species. Electroshocking is considered the preferred sampling method for evaluating stream fish communities. However, concerns, including costs and safety, have prohibited FOTR from electroshocking in the past. In summer 2022, University of Michigan assisted FOTR community scientists in electroshocking > 50 sites in the watershed to compare the methods. We assessed the differences between the electroshocking data and seining data. We found few differences in species richness, community dissimilarity, and the presence of tolerant and intolerant species across sites. FOTR is the only organization consistently monitoring in the Rouge and we find that seining has several advantages for their program and produces reliable assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]